pack and at the same time developed the pack
and themselves. When Michael was asleep, then it was that pack-memories
sometimes arose to the surface of his subconscious mind. These dreams
were real while they lasted, but when he was awake he remembered them
little if at all. But asleep, or singing with Steward, he sensed and
yearned for the lost pack and was impelled to seek the forgotten way to
it.

Waking, Michael had another and real pack. This was composed of Steward,
Kwaque, Cocky, and Scraps, and he ran with it as ancient forbears had ran
with their own kind in the hunting. The steerage was the lair of this
pack, and, out of the steerage, it ranged the whole world, which was the
_Mary Turner_ ever rocking, heeling, reeling on the surface of the
unstable sea.

But the steerage and its company meant more to Michael than the mere
pack. It was heaven as well, where dwelt God. Man early invented God,
often of stone, or clod, or fire, and placed him in trees and mountains
and among the stars. This was because man observed that man passed and
was lost out of the tribe, or family, or whatever name he gave to his
group, which was, after all, the human pack. And man did not want to be
lost out of the pack. So, of his imagination, he devised a new pack that
would be eternal and with which he might for ever run. Fearing the dark,
into which he observed all men passed, he built beyond the dark a fairer
region, a happier hunting-ground, a jollier and robuster feasting-hall
and wassailing-place, and called it variously "heaven."

Like some of the earliest and lowest of primitive men, Michael never
dreamed of throwing the shadow of himself across his mind and worshipping
it as God. He did not worship shadows. He worshipped a real and
indubitable god, not fashioned in his own four-legged, hair-covered
image, but in the flesh-and-blood image, two-legged, hairless,
upstanding, of Steward.

CHAPTER XV

Had the trade wind not failed on the second day after laying the course
for the Marquesas; had Captain Doane, at the mid-day meal, not grumbled
once again at being equipped with only one chronometer; had Simon
Nishikanta not become viciously angry thereat and gone on deck with his
rifle to find some sea-denizen to kill; and had the sea-denizen that
appeared close alongside been a bonita, a dolphin, a porpoise, an
albacore, or anything else than a great, eighty-foot cow whale
accompanied by her nursing calf--h